Dean Supporters -- could someone fill me in on what people mean when

[Emillereid]

they refer to irregularities and weird behavior in Maine, Wash and NH???

[frustrated_lefty]

1. The reference is to irregularities between entrance and exit polls

the fact that multiple precincts have yet to report, and the fact that there is no paper trail. Call it a real worry, call it tinfoil conspiracy, the bottom line is there is a lot of missing information. Doesn't matter who you support, this is an important issue.

[Virgil]

4. You are exactly right this is an important issue

Just how incompetent can Congress get when it passes and funds machines that take the paper trail out of elections. How corrupt can you get? We will find out because Congress won't want it different now either.

The biggest issue before us is the corruption of government. I hope people take notice of this insanity.

[KaraokeKarlton]

2. Here's the basics...

NH...wherever the ballots were counted by hand, the race was incredibly tight, so tight as it wouldn't have been able to be called. However, wherever they used the machines to count, Kerry was way ahead. Now, NH isn't that big of a state, and as someone who lives in Vermont and works in NH, I find it very suspicious that there was such a huge discrepency like this. I'm not into all the conspiracy theory things, either. With Washington, all of the votes still aren't in and I believe there was some reports of the wrong numbers being reported that ended up favoring Kerry. Now Maine, that's a real suspicious mess. I spent Sunday evening scouring the internet forums, groups, blogs and whatnot. I was hearing a lot of first hand reports from caucuses by actual caucus goers. All but a couple of the reports I saw said that either Dean beat Kerry at their caucus or it was a virtual tie between them, with Dean winning Portland big. (Portland is the biggest city in maine). The state has reported that over 20,000 people voted in the caucus, yet the last I saw they were still stalled at 80% sites reporting. The number of voters who were counted were under 15,000. There were over 5000 votes still unaccounted for with Kerry at 4843 votes and Dean at 2774. On top of that, I saw a post about one of the results reporting temporarily showing Dean over 4500 votes with Kerry at 4843, and then a few minutes later he dropped back down to 2774. Something definitely smells very bad in Maine. Hopefully it will be revealed in our lifetimes. :shrug:

[jansu]

9. Good post!

And no one questioned how the poll numbers turned against Dean so fast! And Kerry's numbers went up so fast. It just does not pass the smell test.....can anyone say Florida?

California passed the paper trail for our touch screens, but it won't be used until 2005! May be too late by then.

[tobius]

3. his behavior

or the voting?

[Terry_M]

5. Everywhere I look, still 80% of Maine precincts reporting. N/T

[newyawker99]

16. Hi Terry_M!!

Welcome to DU!! :toast:

[SadEagle]

19. AP has 86%..

http://customwire.ap.org/dynamic/files/elections/2004/primaries/by_state/ME_Page.html?SITE=YAHOOELN&SECTION=POLITICS#TOP

[revcarol]

6. One thing I noticed.(Maine.)

When the number of precincts reporting increased, DK's actual vote # went DOWN.

Hope they are sorting this out and checking and double-checking, this delay and uncertainty is a black mark against the Party.

[Renew Deal]

7. Sex

[HazMat]

8. that's an easy one

It means "my guy didn't win and I can't accept it, so I think I'll make up some conspiracy BS to make myself feel better".

[Anwen]

10. Really?

You have nothing to say for the fact that there is 20% still left to count in Maine? Or that there are 55 precincts still unaccounted for in Washington? That caucus was on Saturday, and it's going on Wednesday.

None of this strikes you as the least bit odd?

[theoceansnerves]

14. hardly

kucinich supports are eagerly awaiting the maine results because he should be picking up delegates, which were left off the projections which were called before the reporting reached 80%. no conspiracies there.

[Eloriel]

11. Quick - edit your thread title!

You're not supposed to use nicknames like that for candidate supporters. I don't happen to mind this one and similar, but it's still against the rules. The thread will get locked otherwise.

[Emillereid]

12. Done

I like the nickname -- it suits us I think. But if thems the rules...

From reading the posts I'd say there appear to be some shenanigans going on -- has the dean campaign said anything about this stuff??

[revcarol]

13. They're just being called sore losers, BUT,

I think this has a lot of legitimacy. After all, only ONE of the parties wants to count the votes and it's OUR PARTY, so let's do it and get it right!!

[madfloridian]

15. There was a note from Zephyr that HQ was looking into them.

For it to be days now without final results is not good. Looks like it is Dean and Kucinich who are most involved in the results...I think.

Thanks for understanding. I know how hard Florida was in 2000, and we can't let it happen again in any form....accidental or careless or whatever.

[candy331]

17. Prelude to November

Get ready for the fix. Democracy at it's finest this time by machine vote stealing, forget the chads. Seems Bush will win handily by this method. Proclaimers of Conspiracy theorists and sore losers now will want the same folks they are lambasting now to unite then I suppose. Never kick the Ass you might need to ride again.

[SadEagle]

18. In NH...

... there was someone using machines, to make calls claiming to be from the Dean campaign at times like 4am. The Dean campaign in NH did not use machines, nor did they call outside reasonable hours.
This has been confirmed by the campaign itself, so this is the most credible of the issues.

See "Statement from State Director Karen Hicks" at http://newhampshire.deanforamerica.com/node?from=8

From WA, there are anecdotal claims of some precincts not reporting the delegates properly; there is no reference of organized patterns, etc. Also, some precincts may have failed to accept voters when they should have. What is confirmed, and partically logged in results threads here is that the count reporting was weird, w/different media sources reporting widely different results, and w/delegates for Kucinich actually decreasing as more delegates came in. It's not at all clear whether this is a matter of news media screwing up, or some screws up in the actual counting. There are also like 50 precincts not counted yet --- and a crazy number of delegates --- around 5000 of 26,000 --- not in the totals.

In ME, the issue is mostly that they don't seem to be able to put the total together, for many days now. Not sure whether this counts as irregularity or lack of organization.

Also, in Iowa, there were anecdotal reports of caucus doors closed too early, of calls to Dean supporters providing them wrong addresses, as well as of the party providing wrong caucus locations to the Dean campaign and newspapers, and fialing to fix that when notified, while at least one other campaign (Gep) had proper information. This too is unconfirmed, and should be treated as of questionnable accuracy

[On the Road]

20. I've Made Several Comments Like This

What I've been referring to are partial results from each state which show Dean in second but doing well. Later results showed Dean dropping about 10 percentage points behind Kerry. In some cases, I believe Dean was shown with fewer votes, not just a smaller percentages. In any case, the effect seemed too large be accounted for by normal fluctuations.

In addition, there were some anecdotal reports from Washington state in which Dean supporters claimed they were denied delegates or the delegate counts reported to HQ were wrong.

I can't evaluate any of these reports. The partial returns showing Dean doing much better than the finals might simply have been errors, but the pattern was the same in all three states.

Who knows? The partials might have even been put out by Dean supporters. I think every campaign may have people willing to do such things.

I just look for patterns that don't sound right. The optical/manual count issue in NH was NOT suspicious to me -- it seemed to be a normal geographical breakdown. But the pattern in NN, WA, and ME seems odd. I would just like to know more about what went on and why.